Austin Texas [with Bronco]

On a recent visit to Austin, I met up with Bronco and pitched an idea for a collaboration, which led to the recording of this Country Western song. I even managed to talk Tom into dusting off his dobro guitar to give it some of that down home feeling. It took awhile for us to settle on a key we both could sing in, but that proved to be a part of the fun of this give-and-take adventure.

The picture is a rollerball drawing I made looking through the trees down on the Colorado River from the top of Mount Bonnell, the highest point in Austin.

I'm going down to Austin
With a guitar and a song
I'm going down to Austin Texas
With an electric guitar and a country-western song
I'm going to find a place to perform it
and I hope y’all will sing along

I'll take you down to Rainey Street
for some of Louie's bar-b-que
I'll take you down to Louie's
for some slow-cooked bar-b-que
You can grab a side of habanero beans
or grilled corn on the cob
chips and salsa
the choice is up to you

Took a walk along that river
nearly fell into Lady Bird Lake
I took a walk along that big river
and nearly fell into Lady Bird Lake
I got distracted by all those pretty women sunbathing
All those pretty women waterbiking
All those pretty women kayaking
I thought my heart was gonna break

If you live in Austin
It pays to be a musician
If you live in Austin
they will pay you to be a musician
And when you live in Austin - it gets a little hot
you'd better have your air conditioned

The bats
To my surprise, my wife asked me if I wanted to see the bats (I hadn't asked her because I figured she wouldn't be interested). They estimate there are a million and a half female bats emerging every night from under that bridge. We watched from atop the bridge deck. Seeing them fly out is unusual, but the most peculiar sight was looking way down the river and seeing cloud-swarms of the bats heading off to feed on insects.

What I enjoy...
...about every single one of your tracks is the raw quality of your voice and the truly-authentic stories you tell. THere's a setting in my mixes that is completely unique, too, giving lending a very personal touch to each recording. (Vocal pitch suffers some here and there, but it's probably easy to fix.) keep 'me coming. I enjoy this kind of reality.

Mixing it up
I make it a point not to polish my mixes too much, because when I lose that "raw" feeling all of my other flaws become too apparent : )

Well, that, and mixing is not my forte. I think of myself a generalist. That is, I aim for an acceptable-sounding mix, and when I engineer that to my ears, I stop obsessing over the quality. Beyond my so-so skills, the physical despoilment of my hearing and the quality of my equipment delimit my ability to produce anything brilliant. Getting all of the parts and components of a song working together in an amicable whole - that's usually what I try to achieve in a mix.

NYC?
An honor to play a small part in this song. If I could just have had him stay another week or two, he never would have gone back to NYC. The dobro really did literally have an inch of dust on all parts. But now I am fooling with it again. Thanks to Warren's request for it.

90º and getting warmer
It's a good thing I left when I did because I see it got even hotter over the next few weeks. I'm just glad I escaped without getting sunburned.

There's usually a vast difference between the conception of a song and the way a production ends up sounding. That was certainly true in this case, but I like the way it developed and the way it turned out. It was fun doing it.

get together
neat double team work here. the compressed country twang solo is sweet. the dobro adds nice authenticity, the drums that came in near the end was a neat surprise. i could use some air condition right now.

When in Texas
By the time at met up with Bronco the song was taking shape and I was able to run by him some of the lyrics. His positive response led to the collaboration. And, of course, his participation lent an air of authenticity to the Texas subject matter : )

On the Porch
That would be my friend Ronnie Babin's porch on his Dad's cabin down on Bayou Teche. We sit there in the humid nightime air having made ourselves as numb as possible with beer and herb. The bayou and swamp are a mere fifty feet away and the sounds carry well in the darkness. Was that slap on the water a big ole garfish or was it the slap of a gator's tail? Want to go for a boat ride in the blackness and find out?

Born in a Minnesota blizzard, I'm now residing in a coastal heat of Brooklyn, New York City.
I recorded my first original composition as a teenager using a reel-to-reel tape recorder back in 1967, and I'm still finding it a creative challenge... [see more]

Country music, also called country and western music or country-western, is an amalgam of popular musical forms developed in the Southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, Celtic Music, Blues, Gospel music, and Old-time music.
Howe